Celebrity life can be a rotten business

The job of a television chef is not without risk, Clare Kermond writes.

Gordon Ramsay is on his knees in the back alley,
spewing up rancid food. "They've just tried their best to kill me with a
rotten scallop." It's a risky business being a celebrity chef these
days.

Speaking from his home in London months later, the memory of that
dodgy shellfish is still vivid: "Scallops rot from the inside out, so it
wasn't until it was in my throat and halfway down that I realised. That
guy was a lethal weapon."

"That guy" was a young chef Ramsay attempted
to reform in his Kitchen Nightmares series. But in the end, while
the restaurant was saved, the chef was beyond help.

The idea for the
series is simple. There's a call from a restaurant in dire straits, weeks
or maybe only days away from going under. Enter the London chef with three
Michelin stars to save the day. Ramsay gives himself a tight deadline to
work out what's going wrong and start fixing it.

We revisit the
restaurants a month later to see if the new order has stuck, or if thing
go pear-shaped without Ramsay to hold their hands.

For a change, this
is food on the telly without the glamour, gloss and happy patter we've
become used to in the plethora of cooking on TV.

In the Yorkshire
restaurant that served up the rotten scallop and "off" black pudding,
Ramsay finds the fridges awash with mould and slush, and fruit and
vegetables covered in fur.

Ramsay does not spring smiling on to the
screen; he is here to crack the whip, to get the kitchen working
again.

He doesn't look like most of the celebrity chefs we've seen; he
is short and stocky with a squashed-looking face. And then there is the
language. Since Boiling Point (1998) - the fly-on-the-wall documentary
about Ramsay's own performance in the kitchen - he has become famous for
his temper and bad language.

Here is Ramsay in Kitchen
Nightmares to the head chef who dished up the infamous scallops:
"This is the f pits. Rock bottom. I've never seen anything like this in my
entire f life. This is a f embarrassment to catering."

Ramsay makes no
apologies for debunking some of the myths about what goes on in commercial
kitchens: "It's not the way I talk to my wife or the children. I'm not
trying to cover up or give you any bullshit that it's glamorous, it's not.
It's a kitchen and it's not going to change."

Ramsay is not a fan of
most television cooking shows. While he is complimentary about Jamie
Oliver and Rick Stein, he says most of the chefs we see on the box are
pushing a fantasy image of kitchens as funky, friendly places.
"Ninety-nine per cent of the chefs in our country are so jumped
up."

Funnily enough, the chef who dished up that rotten scallop aspired
to his own cooking show.

If people take one thing away from Kitchen
Nightmares, apart from a queasy stomach, Ramsay hopes it will be the
message never to take the customers for granted. "If we in this industry
are constantly thinking about ourselves instead of what our customers
want, we're in big trouble."

Ramsay grew up wanting to play
professional football. After a leg injury forced him off the field, he
began searching for a new job. The more he learnt about food in cooking
studies, the more he loved it.

"The biggest appeal was the freedom that
food had; the chance to travel, never two days the same . . . To be a
doctor, you study for eight or nine years; this was longer."

He had a
tough upbringing and has experienced more sadness with his brother Ronnie
battling drug problems.

Now 37, Ramsay has four young children with his
wife Tana. Despite the hellish chef's hours and his extensive business
commitments, he makes it clear that he puts great importance on his
involvement with his family: "Eating at the table with the children three
or four times a week is absolutely crucial."

Starting out at catering
school with his leg in plaster and his head still full of football, Ramsay
could never have imagined his success. His Chelsea restaurant Gordon
Ramsay has earned three Michelin stars, he has four other London
restaurants and will travel to New York within days to check on a possible
site for a planned Manhattan venture. His business turns over &#163;40
million a year.

The chef is also enjoying huge ratings in Britain with
Hell's Kitchen, where he tries to mould 10 celebrities into
cooks.

Asked if he could be spreading himself too thin, Ramsay is
quick to give credit to his team - of about 850
staff!